An Arizona pastor is going on the charm offensive this week, angrily condemning a fellow pastor for not endorsing the traditional Christian values of stoning gays to death.

The unnamed dissenting pastor requested that his congregation’s listing be removed from Steven Anderson’s church directory, a request which Pastor David Berzins of Word of Truth Baptist Church called an act of treason to his faith.

“I like the guy,” Berzins said. “He’s a Christian, he’s saved, he does soul-winning, he believes in the King James Bible, it’s a Baptist church — Independent Fundamental Baptist church.”

Even though the pastor in question believes that “homosexuality is a wickedness and preaches against it,” his faith is suspect because he won’t endorse putting gays to death, according to Berzin.

“But just because they don’t believe that [gays] should be stoned,” he said, that calls the pastor’s teachings into question.

Berzins insisted, that it’s “clear” people with same-sex attractions should be stoned to death.

15 Comments

Some of these so-called “Christians” have never gotten out of the Middle Ages. Wasn’t it Jesus who prevented the stoning of a woman caught in adultery? I don’t think Jesus would approve the stoning of anybody. That’s why pastors and “Christians” like this are not Christians at all–They are hypocrites and they misinterpret Scripture, cherry-picking it when it must be taken in its entirety — it is all connected. They oppose the liberal teachings of Jesus. They pass judgement when it is not their place to do so. The Catholic church does not teach that homosexuality is wrong, It is not a sin. It does question the morality of sex outside of marriage between any two people homo or hetero.

Well it’s right there in Leviticus 20. You either take the Bible seriously or you don’t. If you do take the Bible seriously, like I was taught to as a child, if you have a brain, its inevitable that in the end you will realize that your faith is built on a house of cards and it will fail eg when you realize that the gay lifestyle is based on normal biology; when you realize that the world is very obviously older than 6000 years; when you realize that the Bible is full of internal and external inconsistencies and errors. Even then its a hard thing to abandon the promise of eternal life and face reality.

If you don’t take the Bible seriously, then you have to base your faith on current church teachings, ie what someone said, in which case again, your faith is built on a house of cards since people are untrustworthy, the big churches are more concerned with popularity than with truth and there are hundreds of different denominations and opinions about everything.

So then, one final option is to base your faith on your relationship with Christ, ie the promptings of the Holy Spirit within you. ie live based on meditation, prayer and whether you ‘have peace’ about a course of action or opinion. In this case the Bible is used as a catalyst to help you hear the Holy Spirit rather than as a literally true history book. Since both the Apostle Paul and various assistants separated non-amicably as did Wesley and Whitfield due to the Holy Spirit apparently telling them opposite things, this suggests that this approach is also a house of cards.

In summary, faith has no logical basis. It’s easy to get sucked into it when an evangelist promises that it will solve all your problems, and for many who need that crutch it can and does make life more successful and superficially happy, especially when it’s all new. So yes there can be a good side to having faith – how could it be so popular otherwise. But the other side to this two-edged sword is this lunatic, who’s perfect justification for his murderous bigotry is provided in black and white by the Bible. And he is just an extreme example of how people with faith are taught to become bigots, to despise and feel themselves superior to those without faith, or those with a different faith, or even those whose opinions about faith are only slightly different to their own. Then of course faith is the perfect tool for the charlatan. I’m not just talking about TV evangelists who get rich by fleecing their flock, but there’s also the politicians who know they can get votes just by showing that there’s a Bible on their desk.

Overall I think faith is a bad thing, and I am so glad I escaped from its suffocating thought control some twenty years ago now.

Leviticus is in the old testament. If someone really wants to be a Christian, they would follow Jesus, not the old testament.

Jeb

April 16, 2015 at 1:47 pm

another dangerous absolute religious lunatic raises his ugly head. These people are just as intolerant as ISIS! He would probably like to make youtube videos of the stoning to death just like the crazy ass arabs show their beheadings.

Richard F. White

April 16, 2015 at 2:07 pm

Reading this story brings back unpleasant memories of my family’s experiences, as well as my own recent personal experiences.

My father was an ordained American Baptist Convention minister, graduate of Eastern Baptist Seminary in Pennsylvania and pastored a church in Philadelphia, PA for many years. Due to my mother’s health issues (emphysema), he retired and they moved to a small town in south central New Mexico. The only Baptist church in the town was a Southern Baptist Convention church and my parents began attending. After several weeks, they decided to officially become members – but were told that the only way they could join was to get up in church during Sunday services and publicly confess their “sin” of having been members of a “heretical” church – the American Baptist Convention – and to be re-baptized! My father refused and started a church, which still is going strong after my parents deaths several years ago.

I personally attend an Episcopalian church where I am the Bass soloist in the choir. In recent years, I am constantly being told by Fundamentalists that I, all Episcopalians, all Methodists, all Presbyterians and all members of the Disciples of Christ AREN’T Christians because of our various denominations’ position on homosexuality, marriage equality and female clergy.

It doesn’t really matter dotofoz, because most Christians constantly preach from Paul-who contradicts almost everything Jesus Christ said. Most Christians should be called ‘Paulonians’ since that’s what they preach

What authority is that assertion based on? Or is it just your opinion that you’ve just picked out of thin air? You are kinda proving one of my points. Someone who takes the Bible seriously would point out that Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” ie, if you follow Jesus, you need to follow the old testament too.

One way that Jesus “fulfilled” the law was by abrogating it. He saved the woman caught in adultery from stoning, he accepted and forgave the prostitute, Mary Magdalene, He taught that we should love our enemies, he taught that a man has already committed adultery if he so much as looks at a woman with lust in his heart. These were innovations and abrogations of the law. He never said anything that was written in the New Testament about homosexuality. But He must have said something. It just did not make it into the New Testament. Yet the Catholic Church has always taught that it is not a sin to be homosexual. It must have got this from Jesus but it was never written in the New Testament, but it is one of many teachings held within Catholicism, based on those many things Jesus taught that never got written down until the Fathers of the Church wrote them down later. As Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will be with you always to teach and remind you of EVERYTHING I have taught you.” But Protestantism arrogantly decided that if it is not in the Bible, it must be wrong. This makes no sense to throw out all the many things Jesus did that could not have been written down (see John 20:30: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which ae not recorded in this book.”) The consequences of Protestantism jettisoning these teaching has brought about disastrous consequences. It has, for example, created monsters such as this Arizona minister.

Robert

April 16, 2015 at 4:03 pm

He is calling for a “Gay Solution” Just like Hitler called for a “Jewish Solution”

I was raised in the Baptist church and fortunately I was able to escape. The last religion I would ever be is BAPTIST! I would raise my children to be suicide bombing Hindu Communist Dodger fans before I’d raise them BAPTIST. Well, maybe not Dodger fans.. that might be a little extreme, but all the other stuff.

Abrogate means repeal or do away with, i.e. abolish. So no, Jesus did not fulfil the law by abrogating it because abrogating it is what Jesus said he didn’t come to do in Matthew 5:17. What he came to do was demonstrate that mercy was available to the repentant. The law still stood, but pardons were available – a new concept. He was also demonstrating by stopping the stoning of the woman caught in adultery that it was for God to be judge and pass sentence, not men.

I find it highly unlikely that Jesus said homosexuality was OK given that he agreed with the law, and so he would since it was supposedly passed down from God, his father to Moses on Sinai. The Apostle Paul certainly didn’t seem to think it was OK as it it is included in his general condemnation of humanity in Romans 1: 18-32. There is no getting around it. Both the Old and New Testaments state that homosexuality is sinful. If the Catholic Church has a different opinion, who cares. Protestantism, which you criticised only started because the Catholic priest Martin Luther was appalled by the gross corruption he found when he visited the church at Rome. He decided that the church had surrendered its authority to say what was truth by its gross hypocrisy and corruption. So where could he go but to the Bible to find ‘true religion’ since the church had failed. Even today, why should anyone trust a church that has systematically covered up worldwide child abuse by its priests on a massive scale. You are defending the indefensible.

The church is not to be trusted, the scriptures are too full of obvious errors to be the inspired words of an omniscient God, the ‘still small voice’ of the Holy Spirit is a fantasy. There is no basis for believing Christianity, and its fruits: corruption, fanaticism, bigotry, mind control, condemnation, persecution, murder, war, division, complacency, smugness etc suggest to me that it should abandoned by all right thinking people.